Ruminations
by bookyalex
Summary: Mulder ponders (and rambles on about) the somewhat psychotic questions of life…which should tell you something about the author…
1. Mulder POV

**Note:** My nice little break from _He Belongs to Me._ Ah, the power of 1,000 or so word once shots…And there's NO MSR!!!! *shock*

**Title**: Ruminations

**Disclaimer: **Seriously, is this really necessary? I obviously don't own the X-Files, the English language, in fact, all I own is myself and my thoughts. o_O I also don't own the poem, it's part of _Il pleure dans mon coeur_, written by Paul Verlaine.

**Summary**: Mulder ponders (and rambles on about) the somewhat psychotic questions of life…which should tell you something about the author…

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            I look up at the stars and I want to cry. The vastness of the heavens astounds me, how something that seems so insignificant as a tiny speck of light is in reality a burning ball of gas hundreds, thousands of light years away. And how someone up there could be looking at Earth and thinking the same thing.

But the tears won't come.

Over the years, I have come to question my faith in the things I have for so long held closest to my heart. I have tread this rutted path too many times, dwelt upon questions I have come to realize we aren't supposed to answer. At times I wonder if there are others out there, creatures, like us, who wonder the ways of the world, the universe, dream of roads not taken and decisions made in haste. Wonder what cruel creator would grant us the intelligence to question yet never enough to answer. 

Yet I know, more than most, that life is far from fair.

I've lost my family, over the past decades, my father for a computer disk, my mother by her own hand, my sister abducted by aliens, or so I was lead to believe, and despite our best attempts we never heard any word of her again.

A French poet once wrote, 

"Il pleure sans raison  
Dans ce coeur qui s'écoeure.  
Quoi! nulle trahison ?...  
Ce deuil est sans raison._"_

Roughly translated, it reads, "It rains without reason in this heart which disgusts itself, why! There is no treason? This is sorrow without reason."

I think it is oddly apropos.

I wish that the pain would end, that it would leave and never return. I've considered more than once ending it myself, if not for the fact that dying without knowing would be far worse than dying with the truth, or at least fighting to find it. Others don't seem to share my sentiment. 

They call me Spooky.

All except one.

And I wonder how deep her feelings go, and the nature of those emotions. Odd, really, how such feelings can be produced by chemical reactions controlled by a small grey mass locked inside our skulls. How people's personalities are dictated by the reactions of electrons and neurons inside our brains. How one person can make everything else secondary.

And all because of science.

Then again, what is science? The study of how things work? What makes the sky blue, or the grass green, what makes the world go 'round and our hearts beat, why do we smile when we're happy and cry when we're sad and laugh when something is funny? What makes something funny? What elicits such a response? And why are our skin and our hair and our eyes different colors? 

If I looked at the world upside down, what would I see? If our eyes did not flip the images right side up after seeing them, processing so much every single second of our lives, how would the world look? What if our eyes do not flip the images? What if everything we see is upside down? What if the floor was the ceiling and gravity caused things to fall up and not down? But what defines down? In space, there is no direction. There is no up or down or left or right or diagonal. Therefore there is no upside down. Why should it be any different on Earth? And if we _did_ see the world upside down, what would we see differently? What if we are seeing the world upside down now and only need to see it right side up? But if we're so used to seeing it upside down, then that would make it right side up, so really, what is up and what is down? Perhaps if we did see in the opposite fashion it would be less chaotic. Maybe the patterns could be seen. Maybe people would realize life for what it is.

Or maybe they wouldn't.

Even with incontrovertible proof thrust beneath their pompous noses humans still have the audacity to deny the truth they do not want to see, to rationalize – for their own peace of mind – why the truth can be no more than lies.

Do I do that? Are the things I claim to be lies really lies, or are they the truth? On the same note, though, the best lies are those with the smallest amount of fact thrown into the mix, just enough to make you believe the rest. Have I been deceived? By myself and by others? Do I think too much? I mean, take the whole upside down thought process. And what causes us to think? How do we know what we think is even true, or even ours? How do we know someone didn't make us and tell us what to think? To think that what we were thinking wasn't what we were really thinking and to confuse us. But why? And is it that important? Are the thoughts of one organism on a planet, and a small planet, at that, so important in the vast workings of life that the thoughts of that person need be altered to serve a greater purpose? But what purpose? To prevent the finding of the truth? But even if we knew the truth, what could we do? Nothing, except save our own skins and those we hold close.

I want to stop thinking, but I can't. Over and over again I ponder in imponderable, think the unthinkable.

And what of fate? Does such a thing exist? Are souls born into a body? What makes each person unique? And if fate does exist, why are we presented with choices? Or are they really choices? Maybe by choosing something completely out of character you are just doing what fate has destined you to do. And if souls did exist, who or what creates them, and how do you get the soul into the body? And who would go through the trouble to create something so trivial? Are we a game? Are we all mere pawns in some elaborate chess competition to see what happens, how even the tiniest details can alter the lives of not just one person, but hundreds, thousands? That's the butterfly effect, is it not? If my parents had waited another week, another month, to have a child, I would not exist. And what would have happened then? I'd have never met Skinner or Krycek or Cancerman or Scully or Pendrell or the countless people involved in my cases. And where would they be now? Would Scully work in the FBI? Would Krycek be a spy, would he have lost his arm, would Melissa and the other hundred others at the cult compound killed themselves? Would Van Blundht be alive or dead? Had I not freed the Genia, what would have happened? Whose wishes would she have granted, and what would those wishes be?

My head is starting to hurt, a familiar feeling. I want to go to sleep, but I doubt I could if I wanted to. I am absently aware of sitting down, I don't know where, am I still in the field off the side of the road or have I made my way to my apartment?

Does it matter?

Does anything matter?


	2. Scully POV

Okay, so it's not a one shot.

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            I'd started driving and I didn't know why. Well, rather I knew _why_, but I couldn't explain what made me do it. One minute I'd been sitting on my couch, the next I was in my car, numbly aware of my actions. I didn't know where I was going, but I _was _going, all the same. After a timeless interval, I stopped the car at the side of a back road. If I'd been here before I didn't recognize it. Silence reigned for a time before I stepped from the car, the door ajar. I would not shatter this night.

            Though it might shatter me.

            I now knew why I was here. The sky was clear of clouds, and I was staring at the vast moonless expanse of a perfect blanket of star. Hundreds, thousands, all in impeccable clarity. My senses seemed heightened, stretched. I could feel the slightest breeze, the faintest brush of grass on skin, the coarseness of my clothing. My shoes had been abandoned in the car so that I might walk this path, alone, directly with the earth.

            Except that I wasn't alone.

            Some small part of me had known he'd be there, know that, whether I liked it or not, my paths would no longer be trodden in solitude. That for the rest of our lives – and beyond – we'd be one of the few fortunates lucky enough to have found our perfect opposites, our only complements, our ones in five billion. A relationship which was reciprocated perfectly, without flaw, a diamond with a thousand faultless facets. How something so complex can seem to simple is enough to boggle the mind. I just wish…just wish I had the courage to jeopardize everything we have to go to the next level, the final level.

            The stars beckoned my spirit, offered me the chance to shed my earthly existence and exchange it for a heavenly one, to float among the stars and know all the secrets of the universe and to truly, undeniably, and completely be at peace. I let myself be lifted, opened my soul, just enough to taste it. It was beautiful, a masterpiece of perfect symmetry, nature's magnum opus, one which offered the chance to comprehend what my mundane mind could not.

            But it was empty.

            I pulled back, any reluctance burned away by the void in my heart that space had produced. It was a place of life, of birth and death, but not one of love, or hate. Emotions were not a factor. And, as a result of that, I knew I could not accept the offer. Not only because of my heart, but because of his.

            Floating dreamily above the silver meadow, I approached him, hoping, praying, that he, too, would deny the offer. Yet I didn't reach out to him, didn't try to sway him in his decision. He had to choose his own path.

            He stood as I had moments – or hours? – before. Brilliant pools of green turned skyward, reflecting stars in their depths. I don't know how I knew, but I knew he was being offered Samantha. A chance to not only see her, but be with her. Forever? With feelings or with the same impassionate embrace of the universe? I could only guess.

            It seemed an eon – and might well have been – before either of us moved.

            And it was he who broke the spell.

            As if jolted from a trance, those same pools lowered, visibly exhausted. They noted with unveiled surprise my presence, the only living soul in this starlit field.

            "You didn't take it."

            As if that wasn't obvious enough.

            He shook his head slowly, clearing his mind and answering my rhetorical statement with the one simple gesture. Even in the night, I could see the pain in his eyes.

            "Why?" I surprised myself at the neutrality of the statement, the detachment of the voice. It was as if part of space had taken residence inside of me, instilling a cool, objective numbness.

            "You weren't there."

            The words were soft, providing a medium for things left unsaid, thousands of words in innumerable languages which even then could not begin to describe the intensity of the emotion. 

            He knew, however, that I needed more than unspoken words. He also knew that, by giving them to me, there was no turning back, no second chances. My heart had frosted over, ice pumping sluggishly through my veins. What if he didn't?

            What if he did?

            The grass crunched beneath his feet, reminding both of us with a surge of bitterness of the bondage in which we were chained and had chosen to willfully remain in.

            Before I could comprehend everything that was going on, he was there, he was _here, _his hands soft on my face, eyes locked on mine, the words there, stronger than ever, waiting for a bridge.

            The bridge was built with a kiss, not one of lust and passion but one of love. Doors I hadn't even known existed were opened, completely, ones I'd been trying to shut for years finally closed.

            I didn't pull away and neither did he, but I soon felt lips and then a head on resting on my hair. He kept his arms circled around my waist, both of us needing the physical contact.

            On a breeze, whispered words for my ears only drifted.

            "I love you."


End file.
